Smoke from the abattoir...

– RAFAH, Dec. 28, 2008 (Xinhua) — Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish flames at a medicine storehouse after Israeli airstrike targeted at a fuel tank nearby in southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah Dec. 28, 2008. (Xinhua Photo  081228)

What’s a little war making from our friends… ?

Gwen Ifill is quoting Obama’s words (daughters -sleeping -Sderot -rockets -I would do the same!, etcetera) to the Palestinian Observer to the UN, and noted that Ehud Barak  quoted him in the Knesset today.  Way to go Barack!  Well cemented in…silent in Hawai’i but well and properly used.    This is so like his tactical words that became enmeshed in the Prop 8 battle out here.  “God is in the mix“, meaning in marriage, said on MTV 3 days before election … and “sex is sacred“, that one, he says often!… The right LOVED it.  Yes on 8 used tapes of his voice.  Oh it all worked out so well.

catch a clue, they are flying in the air….

From Democracy NOW!

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Dr. Moussa El-Haddad, I’d like to ask you also about the—there have been reports that the Israelis were trying to block television signals. What’s the situation with the electricity, the ability of the people to at least get some information and communicate with each other?

DR. MOUSSA EL-HADDAD: Well, as I speak to you know, I have no electricity in my house. I have a generator that I can open or let work for like two or three hours every now and then to let the internet work and watch TV. We have electricity like three or four hours a day. We have no cooking gas. I mean, I’m talking about the people. Maybe I have a little left in my house. But people don’t have electricity about 75 percent of the time, no cooking gas, no gas for the cars. So fuel is also lacking. And the only source of, like, food and fuel lately was through Egypt, through those tunnels, and these were attacked last night. At least forty tunnels were demolished last night.

I don’t know. This is—can you tell me if any of this is against Hamas? There’s nothing against Hamas.

This is a clear-cut genocide and holocaust against civilians, civilians who are helpless. They don’t have warplanes. They don’t have warships. They don’t—even the rockets that they talk about are homemade. And I just—I cannot—and I really lost the words, because the situation is so bad. And we are in the twenty-first century. We are not in tenth or fifteenth century. Everybody in the world can see and hear. But who acts? Who is doing anything? Now, they say the killer and the killed are the same. They are putting Israel, with all its military power, [inaudible] level like Hamas and people of Gaza.

And the smoke rises higher:

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: … Also, I want to clarify that Gaza Strip is the highest densely populated area in the world, with almost 4,150 people in each square kilometer. When you start bombing the place with bombs that are one to two tons heavy, then you’re determined to kill people and kill civilians and innocent people.

I’ve just heard Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister of Israel, saying that Palestinians should go away from Hamas and Gaza. Where should they go away? In which place? Where? Which place they can go to, when Israel is putting Gaza for two years under total blockade, by sea, by air, by land. Israel has been claiming that it has withdrawn from Gaza. Israel never ended its occupation of Gaza. It maintains the occupying of the airspace, the sea around Gaza and the land around Gaza.

And it was preventing people from getting medical aid and equipment and fuel and electricity. I was just talking to our people in Gaza and asked them, “What is your situation?” They told me they don’t have bread. Even bread is unavailable in Gaza. And now Israel is bombarding it in this horrible and unacceptable way.

I think the world community must see the reality. This is an unprecedented bloodbath that the Israeli generals are using—and politicians are using for their political campaigning in their elections. For one more time, they’re using Palestinian blood for their election campaigns.

I’m so sorry that even some left parties in Israel are supporting such an aggression.

They all claim that this is about missiles. But let me ask a very simple question: How many Israelis were killed during the last six months by missiles? Almost none. The only two Israelis that were killed so far were killed after this operation.

… and what does smoke rise from… burning flesh.

ALI ABUNIMAH: Isn’t it convenient that we only have one president at a time, when it suits Barack Obama to stay silent on something that is enflaming the whole world? Apparently, we don’t have one president at a time when it comes to the economy or Iraq or Afghanistan or other issues. But on this, Barack Obama is content to remain silent and, in fact, to give, through the statements of David Axelrod, his more or less open support for what Israel is doing, which fits with the policies that he has enunciated consistently of supporting Israel’s attacks on Gaza, supporting the blockade of Gaza, supporting the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006.

And this is why Israel feels so comfortable carrying out these sorts of atrocities, which cross every red line of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, of the Nuremberg Principles, of all of the laws of war that were developed in the twentieth century.

Israel feels totally comfortable crossing them, because it knows that it will have full support from any US administration, no matter what political shade it is.

And this is why it’s crucially important that people don’t sit by waiting ’til January 20th. January 20th, the calendar flipping is not going to change anything. What’s going to change things is boycott, divestment and sanctions, people rising up and demanding an end to impunity, demanding, for example, that Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni be brought to account before an international war crimes court for the orders that they have given for these massacres of the civilian population of Gaza. That’s what’s going to bring change, and that’s what people must call and organize for.

Well… we won’t see Ehud or Tzipi before any war crimes court, nor will we  see BushCheney.

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